The 9th general meeting of the Armenian National Students’ Association ended with a seminar dedicated to TEMPUS programs. One of the programs is “Ararat”.
Ruben Topchyan, director of ANQA, made a speech on “Ararat. Discussion of goals: trust building”. Mr. Topchyan informed students about the aims of the program, then they discussed present problems and their reasons.
The students raised the question of putting on a serious basis the process of profession choosing. They say, that young applicants of universities often don’t have sufficient knowledge about their profession, so they often make the wrong choice. The reason of contradiction in labour market also was discussed: on the one hand the labour market needs employees, on the other hand there are a lot of unemployed specialists. The students also complained of inadequacy of educational programs to demand of the labour market.
Mr. Topchyan mentioned that one of the goals of the program is to ensure that the universities take into consideration the demand towards their educational programs. The ANQA also takes into account the factor when providing program accreditation.
“Ararat”is a 3 year program that was launched on December 2012. The aim is to create a dialogue between the labour market and universities, so that the labour market could make its demand audible for universities, and universities could prepare specialists in accordance with the requirements of the market.
The program coordinator is ASUE. The results of the program will be concentrated in ANQA and used when doing program accreditation in universities.